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William Matthews - The Search Party
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I wondered if the others felt 
as heroic 
as safe: my unmangled family 
slept while I slid uncertain feet ahead 
behind my flashlight’s beam. 
Stones, thick roots as twisted as 
a ruined body, 
what did I fear? 
I hoped my batteries 
had eight more lives 
than the lost child. 
I feared I’d find something. 


Reader, by now you must be sure 
you know just where we are, 
deep in symbolic woods. 
Irony, self-accusation, 
someone else’s suffering. 
The search is that of art. 


You’re wrong, though it’s 
an intelligent mistake. 
There was a real lost child. 
I don’t want to swaddle it 
in metaphor. 
I’m just a journalist 
who can’t believe in objectivity. 
I’m in these poems 
because I’m in my life. 
But I digress. 
A man four volunteers 
to the left of me 
made the discovery. 


We circled in like waves 
returning to the parent shock. 
You’ve read this far, you might as well 
have been there too. Your eyes accuse 
me of false chase. Come off it, 
you’re the one who thought it wouldn’t 
matter what we found. 
Though we came with lights 
and tongues thick in our heads, 
the issue was a human life. 
The child was still 
alive. Admit you’re glad.
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